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11 January 2016

Heat and motion sensors monitor whether Telegraph journalists are at their desks

Indeskigative reporting.

By Media Mole

Your mole has heard terrifying news from its whiskered counterpart at Telegraph towers, Barclay Burrows, that they’re now monitoring journalists’ movements using desk sensors.

As a particularly sedentary reporter itself, who spends most if its time at its underground desk made of compacted soil and straw, your mole is relying on this BuzzFeed report for the details of this harrowing news.

Apparently journalists noticed the attachments to their desks this morning, and found out that they monitor motion and heat to record how often workers are at their desks. For a paper that has been ravaged by redundancies and assaulted with a new online strategy controversial among the paper’s staff over the past year, it feels like a threatening move by management to chain reporters in precarious jobs to their desks.

The Telegraph has told staff the devices have been fitted for environmental reasons, but it’s still an uncomfortable measure at a paper that hasn’t felt comfortable in a while.

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